


A Dream Within a Dream

by arielmagicesi



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Non TRK compliant, Not Canon Compliant - The Raven King, Post-Blue Lily Lily Blue, Sharing a Bed, didn't bother to research welsh history, disgustingly sappy, dream world shenanigans, no henry though even though i love him sorry, took my favorite parts of trk and threw the rest out of the window, world building nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 20:58:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7479756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arielmagicesi/pseuds/arielmagicesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kings and dream thieves have tried, before, to find the stone that could revive the dead. Only a Greywaren could retrieve it, however, and only with the will of Cabeswater at his side.<br/>(Ronan and Adam venture into the dream world in an attempt to find something that could save Gansey.)<br/>(I reworked the entire plot of the Raven King, basically, but obviously since these are not my books, there are likely a lot of plot holes and inconsistencies and gaps. This is really just an excuse to write Pynch get together in a different way than they did in TRK... so, you know, I apologize for any plot issues.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream Within a Dream

Adam had thought he’d be a lot angrier when Blue and Gansey admitted they were dating. As it turned out, the only thing that made him mad was that they’d thought he would be mad. Which was a ridiculous vicious circle of anger and irritation that he neatly decided to let go of when he saw Blue’s apologetic face.

“I’m not mad,” he said. “Why do you think I would be mad?”

Blue and Gansey looked at each other. Clearly, they had been planning this moment, though Adam thought the circle of picnic tables at the edge of the state park was an odd choice of venue.

“Well, because we didn’t tell you,” Blue said. “For, well, for months.”

“Months?” Adam asked, amused. “How long has it been?”

Gansey was very red and stuttery.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It just… happened. Somehow. I really am sorry, Adam, really I am.”

“The only thing to be sorry about is that you weren’t honest with me,” Adam replied. “And… I don’t really blame you. I probably _would_ have been mad a few months ago.”

“But you’re not now?” Blue pressed.

“No,” he said. “Trust me, Blue, no offense, but I’m really over you.”

As if on cue, a loud bass beat emerged from the nearby road, accompanied by the car that was producing it.

“Ah, finally,” Gansey said, looking incredibly relieved to have an excuse to end this conversation. “The dreamer’s here. We can start the search for his dreams.”

In the week after Jesse Dittley’s death, Ronan had been plagued with dreams about something vicious and dark haunting Cabeswater. Adam had scryed to try and figure out what it meant, and had been led to multiple locations along the ley line, each of which had held gory bits of trees clearly gasped out of a dream.

The latest scrying attempt had led them to this bit of the state park, just outside of Cabeswater itself. The whole gang was coming along this time, in the hopes that all their powers could coax out what the problem was.

Ronan parked the BMW and crashed his way out of the car, Chainsaw on his shoulder. He did not look happy.

“Lynch!” Gansey said. “Finally. Let’s go.”

“New information,” Ronan said, without preamble. “I know what’s in Cabeswater.”

They all turned to stare at him.

“Remember the third sleeper?” he said. “The one we weren’t supposed to wake?”

“Oh, fuck no,” Blue said.

“Yeah. Just had another dream. Apparently Piper fucking Greenmantle woke it. And she’s…”

He looked pointedly away from Blue.

“What?” Blue insisted.

“She’s with your creepy aunt. N-something, I forget her name.”

Blue’s face fell.

“No, no, no,” Blue said. “No.”

“What are they doing?” Gansey asked. “Who’s the third sleeper? What is it doing?”

Ronan let out a frustrated breath.

“I don’t fucking know,” he said. “It’s obeying all of Piper’s orders, that’s for sure. It looked like a giant bug or some shit. N-lady-”

“Neeve,” Blue supplied.

“Yeah, her, she’s giving Piper instructions about how to get power over Cabeswater, that’s what she wants. She asked the bug thing for the power to walk in dreams, so now she’s coming into my dreams and giving me fucking villain monologues. It’d be funny if it didn’t mean the end of the goddamn world is coming.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Adam breathed.

This made sense. He knew it did. Lately he’d been feeling like the ley line had been… violated. Entered by other sentient beings without permission. And a _bug_ … he’d felt crawling at the edges of his consciousness over the past week.

“We have to stop it,” he said.

“No shit, Parrish.”

“If Piper gets control of the ley line,” Adam said, ignoring this interruption, “she’ll be able to destroy half the world. And she most likely will.”

“That’s not the only problem,” Ronan said. “I don’t think the bug wants to obey her orders. It’s got its own agenda. If the bug manages to get control away from her, it’s going to destroy Cabeswater. And…”

He stared at the ground.

“And everything dreamed out of it. And me. And if it destroys Cabeswater…”

He looked up at Adam.

Adam felt the breath knock out of his chest.

“That settles it,” Gansey said. “We’ve got to find a way to destroy this… bug. Or whatever it is.”

 

They’d gone back to Fox Way after, to ask the psychics what the hell was going on.

According to Maura, the bug was a demon. And she was not surprised that Neeve had helped to wake it.

“She’s always wanted power,” Maura had said. “I’ve expected her to run across a demon for years now.”

Demons, or at least this one, wanted only one thing: destruction. This particular demon had been sleeping for centuries- Maura was unsure who had put it to sleep, but it was not someone of this world. It was someone who lived in dreams, who had been trying to protect Cabeswater.

That was when Ronan had admitted to dreaming Cabeswater.

In retrospect, Adam was not surprised. When he was not doing work that involved thinking, he occupied his mind with analysis, and over the past month, that analysis had primarily focused on two things: Cabeswater, and Ronan Lynch. He’d come to the conclusion a few times that it was likely that Cabeswater was a creation of Ronan’s.

Sitting on the steps outside 300 Fox Way, now, while everyone else was still inside, he considered that Ronan was the polar opposite of the demon. A creator, in opposition to a destroyer. Light, in opposition to darkness.

He forced himself to take a long breath, stop thinking about Ronan, and look down again at the tarot cards.

They seemed to suggest one place.

The door opened behind him. He looked back. It was Ronan.

“Done with your magic psychic shit yet?” he asked, and sat down next to Adam.

“Think so,” Adam said.

They sat there, with the weight of a thousand things unsaid hanging around them. It was afternoon. It was October. It was windy. Ronan dreamt Cabeswater. There was a demon in Cabeswater. Ronan liked Adam. Adam…

Was not the sort of person who liked people like Ronan.

Right?

Ronan didn’t say any of those things. Instead, he said, “Sargent just talked to her father.”

“He came out of the tree?” Adam asked.

Artemus was yet another factor to this whole thing that didn’t make sense, and yet did. A visitor from another time, like Gwenllian. A tree-light, according to the few sentences he’d spoken since being freed from the cave. One of Glendower’s magicians.

“Sargent can be persuasive,” Ronan said.

“True.” Then, “What’d he say?”

Ronan looked down at his hands between his knees.

“According to him,” Ronan said, “there’s one way to defeat a demon for good. A willing death. On the ley line.”

Adam said nothing.

More things left unsaid.

“Gansey,” Ronan said finally. “Gansey’s on that fucking death list, isn’t he?”

Adam nodded. He couldn’t speak.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Adam?”

Adam shook his head. He still couldn’t speak.

“Gansey’s not going to die, I don’t care if it’s fate, _I’ll_ do it, I don’t care, we’ll find another way. Won’t we?”

Ronan’s voice was so broken.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, finally, his voice thick. “I didn’t know what to do when I found out. I thought we were gonna find Glendower in time.”

“Fuck Glendower,” Ronan said. Now he sounded harsh again, voice splintered together into something dark. “He’s not a guarantee. We don’t even fucking know if his favor is real.”

Adam knew this, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it.

“What else do we have?” Adam asked.

Ronan stared out into the grey October sky.

“Me,” he said.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” Adam said, without hesitation.

“You can fucking relax, Parrish, I’m not gonna kill myself. I meant that I have powers that even this demon thing doesn’t. Powers that Artemus couldn’t even imagine.”

Despite himself, Adam rolled his eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Parrish.”

“ _I have unbelievable cosmic powers_ ,” Adam said, mockingly.

“You fucking asshole.”

“All right, then, what’s your plan, Lynch Almighty?”

Ronan cracked a tiny smile, which made Adam’s chest burn up.

“To go into the dream world,” he said.

 

He’d been trying to do it for months. Ever since Kavinsky’s death. He knew that his father had never been able to make it, but had wanted to.

The dream world. The place where doors of time opened and closed. The birthplace of Cabeswater, and Orphan Girl. Where Ronan’s DNA coiled into the roots within the soil.

Ronan wouldn’t admit it if asked, but he’d been doing research. Regular, bona fide, library-book, Gansey-style research, on dreams and dreamers.

It had just been a rumor he’d read, in a book he’d stolen out of Greenmantle’s empty house the other day. But something deep within him believed it and he trusted that bit of him, that bit of him that echoed the best parts of Niall Lynch.

A rumor that there was a necromancer object in the dream world that only the Greywaren could find and operate.

Unfortunately, to get to the dream world required something more than the Greywaren alone. It required the will of Cabeswater itself. Or, at the very least, someone who had an intimate relationship with the will of Cabeswater.

If anyone in their band of kings and magicians had the strength to face down a nightmare, it was Adam. Ronan knew that. He was still afraid. Afraid that once they got to the dream world, one or the other of them would lose control, and Adam would be ripped apart.

There wasn’t much of a choice, though, was there?

Adam had agreed pretty readily to the plan. Ronan could see that the thought of Gansey’s death was killing him, too. There was something else, too, which Ronan didn’t want to think about but naturally he did anyway.

That strange camaraderie that was more than camaraderie. That assurance that when they did this, they would do it together, and alone together. Like when they’d framed Greenmantle.

Jesus. Ronan was being a fucking dumbass. Yeah, how _sweet_ , how _romantic_ , framing someone for murder and looking for necromancers in a nightmare.

His breath and his heart were all swelling up together at the thought of it anyway.

On Friday, the day after the revelation of the demon, the day after Ronan and Adam had decided to venture into the dream world without telling the others, Ronan went to school. This was not out of any fondness for Aglionby, but rather because he figured that it could very well be the last time he saw Gansey and Adam in a normal context, and he wanted to hold on to it. Even if it was the context of fucking Aglionby Academy.

Adam’s eyebrows raised at the sight of him in Latin, when both of them arrived early, and Ronan settled his breath quickly. _Act normal, you idiot loser fuckass idiot._

“What are you doing here?” Adam asked, when Ronan sat down behind him. “This school is too small for someone like you.”

Ronan rolled his eyes, face a little too warm.

“Could say the same about you,” he replied.

Adam shrugged and turned back around to face the front of the room. Ronan let out an almost inaudible sigh.

So many things left unsaid. And when they talked, all they did was shout.

Less, lately. He felt like he was working open a tightly woven curtain between them, stitch by stitch, and he just wanted to rip it open without creating a torn-up mess.

“Tonight,” Adam said. “Right? On the ley line, where Cabeswater told me it would be. I can take you there and then we’ll both go.”

“You know where to go in Cabeswater,” Ronan said. “I know where to go once we get… there.”

“Pick me up after work,” Adam said. “Four thirty.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Ronan said. “Just skip work.”

Adam tensed, and Ronan instantly regretted saying it.

“Easy for you to fucking say,” Adam snapped.

Ronan felt anger boiling in his veins. He was such a fucking _idiot_.

“Whatever,” he muttered.

Then other students poured in, and the day went to shit.

There wasn’t much to think about or say. Ronan sure as hell didn’t pay attention to his classes, or the petty gossip floating in every extracurricular conversation. Mostly he just perfected his brooding glare and avoided Adam’s eyes.

At lunch, he and Adam pointedly didn’t talk to each other. Adam got up and left early, claiming he was going to the library. As soon as he left, Gansey opened his mouth.

“Don’t start, Gansey,” Ronan said, before Gansey could say a word. Gansey shut down.

Then he looked up again.

“No,” Gansey said. “You know what, no. I’m sick of this, and you know something, Ronan, you’re acting like a child.”

“Only fair, since you’re acting like a dad.”

“Not funny.” He lowered his voice. “There’s a damn good chance I’m going to die soon, Ronan, and you know that. We all need to be honest with each other.”

“Ha,” Ronan said. “I’m always honest.”

“I’m beginning to doubt that, to be frank. What’s going on between you and Adam?”

Ronan tensed. There was a lot more in the answer to _that_ question than he suspected Gansey wanted to hear.

Gansey was right, though, which he hated. He was being a dishonest asshole and he was avoiding the problem and he was being unnecessarily angry and _damn it_ , he didn’t want to be angry anymore. The thought of Gansey’s death was eating away at him and lately he’d been feeling like he didn’t want his entire being to be filled up with this pointless, endless noise.

“I told him to skip work,” he said, staring at the lunch table. “And he got mad ‘cause I don’t know, ‘cause I’m a rich asshole who doesn’t get it or whatever.”

Gansey’s eyes narrowed.

“Are you sorry for saying it?” he asked.

“Yeah, fucking of course, Gansey.”

“Did you apologize?”

“What? No.”

Gansey threw his hands in the air.

“What do you want, Gansey?” Ronan said. “Like it ever works when _you_ apologize to Parrish.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?”

“It’s different because I’m me, and you’re… you. I don’t know what it is. Things are different between you two, somehow. If you just _talk_ to him like a regular human being, you might actually get through to him.”

“Jesus,” Ronan muttered. He kept staring at the table.

“Could you please talk to him, for my sake at least? You told me you two are going to look for something in Cabeswater tonight, and I want you to be on speaking terms if you’re doing something dangerous. And I know you’re doing something dangerous.”

Ronan looked up. He’d told Gansey some vague lie about looking for some Glendower-related object in Cabeswater, but he supposed he should have known Gansey would work out that it was something more dangerous than that.

“You’re not going to stop us?” he asked.

“Would I be able to?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not going to stop you. I just want you to be able to talk to each other like actual friends while you do whatever it is.”

Ronan sighed, exasperated.

“I hate that you’re always fucking right,” he said.

“Not always,” Gansey said.

Then he, too, sighed.

“Jane and I are going to be out looking for something, too,” he said. “Tonight. The thing that keeps possessing Noah.”

“Fuck,” Ronan said. He’d nearly forgotten about Noah’s near-daily bouts of possession, hissing verses in Latin and tree-language. It was worrying him to death, along with every-fucking-thing else.

“We’ve been working out what the verses mean,” Gansey continued. “They lead to a single point on the ley line. I believe it might hold some clues about Glendower.”

So Gansey was still holding out hope about Glendower. Ronan didn’t blame him. After looking for the king for so long, Gansey couldn’t bear to lose hope for him.

Ronan, on the other hand, was beginning to lose hope.

He stood up.

“I’m gonna go talk to Parrish.”

“Good,” Gansey said. “And if I don’t see you later- good luck.”

“You too.”

 

Adam did not go to the library. He went to the courtyard and sat on the brick edge of the low wall surrounding it. And he thought.

Why was he so bothered by not talking to Ronan?

That was the thing- it wasn’t even the comment about skipping work that had bothered him. It was not talking to Ronan properly, when all he wanted to do was talk to him.

He couldn’t avoid this any longer.

_What is it? I like him? I want to date him? I’m attracted- I mean, Jesus fuck, I’m so attracted to him- no, god damn it, stop making this shit up, you just like attention._

“Parrish?”

Adam nearly jumped.

Ronan’s expression was less steel, more water. Open as a sky.

“What is it?” Adam asked.

Ronan sat down next to him.

“I’m sick of this silent treatment bullshit,” he said. “Sorry I told you to skip work. It was… I dunno, inconsiderate.”

Adam pushed his legs up on to the wall, crossing them underneath him.

“Apologizing?” he said, without any malice to his tone. “That’s new.”

“I’m capable of doing new things.”

“So am I,” Adam said, and he knew exactly what he meant when he said it.

They looked at each other for a tense second, then Ronan said, “Four thirty. At Boyd’s, right?”

“Yeah,” Adam said, catching his breath.

“See you then,” Ronan said, and then he got up and left.

Adam stared after him and then, knowing that he was alone in the courtyard, fell back to rest his head against his backpack and let out a long, agonized sound.

He could not deny the rush of relief and strange, clear joy that had flooded him when Ronan had come up and started talking.

This was so, so new. So unfamiliar. Uncharted. There was no set of instructions to it.

And they were going to be busy looking for this thing that could raise the dead, anyway. The thing to save Gansey. They had to stay stable and focused if they wanted to succeed.

Adam was going to keep control of himself.

 

Ronan was going to lose his shit.

He knew that Adam knew how he felt. He had figured, before, that Adam was just ignoring it, because Adam was used to being admired.

What did it mean that Adam was practically _encouraging_ him?

How in the fuck was he going to focus on getting into the dream world, which was a damn Herculean labor even without an angelically beautiful fucking god distracting him? How was he going to get this shit done, exactly?

He stopped at Monmouth to pick up Chainsaw. Gansey and Blue were there, standing by the window and staring into each other’s eyes. Ronan raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

“Ronan!” Gansey exclaimed, jumping away from Blue. Blue turned red.

“I don’t care, do what you want,” Ronan said. “Parrish already told me about you two.”

“Oh,” Gansey said. “Well. Then. I expect you will be… off, then? Soon?”

“Going to Cabeswater with Parrish, yeah,” Ronan said. “Hopefully we’ll be back by the end of the weekend. It’s gonna be a long search.”

“A long search?” Blue asked. “And what is it you’re searching for?”

“You’ll find out, Sargent.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “Fine, be mysterious. I won’t bother telling you what Gansey and I are searching for.”

“Too late,” Ronan said. “I know you’re looking for the thing Noah’s talking about.”

Blue’s face fell.

“Noah’s not doing well,” she said. “He’s just barely hanging on, by now.”

Ronan’s chest grew heavy.

“I know,” he said. “I know. That’s why we have to do all this, and get it done soon. Find what Noah’s talking about, find Glendower, kill the demon.”

Gansey nodded at him.

“You and Adam find what you’re looking for, too.”

He walked over and gave Ronan a quick hug.

Blue was looking contemplative.

“Ronan,” she said. “Can we talk?”

“Uh, sure, maggot,” he said. “What about?”

She glanced at Gansey and then said, “Outside.”

Confused, Ronan followed Blue down the stairs outside. Gansey looked confused, too. He waved goodbye, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time he ever saw him.

“What is it, Sargent?” he asked, once they were right outside the door. It was a little chilly out, and leaves were rushing down the street in gusts of wind.

She sighed and crossed her arms, then looked up at him. Ronan could see himself in her, scared and angry.

“Look, maybe it’s not my place,” she said. “But I care about Adam, too. He’s my friend. And I just… be careful.”

“Of course I’ll be careful,” Ronan said. “Cabeswater’s getting fucked over, we all have to be careful. I’m not gonna let him die, Sargent.”

Blue gave him a withering look.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “Gansey doesn’t notice it, but I do. I know there’s something going on between you two.”

Ronan looked up and away from her.

“Oh,” he said. “Uh. Yeah.”

He looked back at Blue. She looked awkward, rubbing her hands together.

Then she glared at him.

“If you hurt him, or- or break his heart- I’m gonna come after you, Lynch. I mean it.”

At that, Ronan couldn’t help but laugh.

“I do!” she said indignantly. “Don’t hurt him, you asshole.”

Ronan could not believe he was talking about this with Blue. He covered his face with his hands. They were both laughing.

“I’m not entirely an asshole, Sargent,” he said. “You don’t need to worry.”

“Good to hear,” she said, and held her fist out. Ronan bumped it.

“Don’t hurt Gansey, either, maggot,” he added.

“I won’t,” she said. “OK. Well. Good luck.”

“Good luck to you, too.”

She went back into Monmouth. He got back into the car, Chainsaw in tow.

 

Adam was waiting outside Boyd’s at four thirty. Messenger bag over his shoulder, clean from engine grease, a pack of tarot cards in his hand.

He got into the car.

“You ready, Parrish?” Ronan asked.

“I’m always ready,” Adam said.

 

Everything was happening. Everything was starting to burn up, and they had to catch up with the flames.

Ronan’s electronica was blaring as he drove to the place in Cabeswater that Adam had specified. Adam closed his eyes and released a long breath.

“You don’t have to do this, Parrish,” Ronan said.

Adam looked over at him.

“You think I’m scared?” he said.

“Wouldn’t blame you. This shit’s dangerous.”

Adam shrugged.

He wasn’t scared. He felt incredibly clear that this was what he was supposed to do. Like that odd rush when someone’s life was in danger and you worked methodically to save them, only slowed down over days.

The danger didn’t matter. To save Gansey, to save Cabeswater- there wasn’t a choice.

“We can handle it,” Adam said, out loud.

Ronan smiled, dark.

“Probably,” he said.

 

It was nearing nightfall when they got to the top of the hill. Adam sat on the ground, laid back, eyes closed.

Around them, below them, lay the forest. The hill emerged from out of it, barer and barer. Ronan drove as far up it as he could, but then they’d gotten out and walked, Chainsaw trailing behind them.

The dusk was electric violet. Ronan could scent a storm on the air.

“Be careful,” he said, standing over Adam.

“Always am,” Adam said, eyes still closed.

Then Adam’s hands dug into the earth and vines were bursting out, crawling around him, moss pooling around his head, and Ronan kept standing, catching his breath.

“Cabeswater,” Adam said, in that strange, otherworldly voice. “Open it.”

The portal.

The storm broke.

“Shit,” Ronan hissed. Lightning struck overhead, the clouds bursting- this was not the goddamn time-

“Ronan,” Adam said.

His eyes were open.

“Get down here,” Adam said. “Lie down, come on.”

His voice was urgent, and Ronan did as he said, lying down awkwardly next to Adam in the mess of moss and vines.

“Do it now,” Adam said. He was unbearably close in the pouring rain. “The portal’s open, do it now.”

Then he grabbed Ronan’s hand, and Ronan’s vision was overcome with blinding light. He forced his way through it- he was not going to be blinded again, this had happened before- he focused on the feeling of Adam’s hand in his and gasped out-

They tumbled into the dream world.

Adam hacked out a cough and blinked repeatedly. They were standing now, hand in hand, in what looked like a city of trees. Not a forest- a city of trees, humming with electricity and light, noise and secrets.

“Holy fucking shit,” Adam breathed. “Did we do it?”

Ronan stared around, up into the night sky, where smoke was settling in.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re here.”

 

The dream world was endless.

Adam had not known what to expect from it, but he’d thought it would look like a cross between Cabeswater and Ronan’s descriptions of his nightmares. This, though- this was a constant walk in possibilities and impossibilities. It was a manifestation of pure imagination.

Ronan looked quite in place walking there. Adam felt like an intruder.

For a while, they gathered their bearings. There was no internal logic or geography to this place, but it was still good to get a sense of their current setting. At the moment, the trees shifted from glass to metal to wood again, and ravens kept rushing in, singing in Latin about the Greywaren.

“Jesus fucking shit,” Ronan said. “We get it, I’m here.”

Adam smiled.

“You know where we have to go, right?” he said.

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “I found it when I was a kid. It’s a castle. Or at least, it used to be. The stone’s in there.”

“Is it guarded?”

“It wasn’t the last time I came.”

“And you know what the stone looks like?”

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “It’s kinda white-ish but with a lot of colors underneath. Soft-looking. I’ll know it when I see it.”

“You’re sure that’s the one?”

“Would I have dragged you into a potential nightmare hell if I wasn’t sure? Fucking Christ, Parrish.”

Adam rolled his eyes and looked around at the softness of the magical woods underneath the bright moonlight.

“It doesn’t look like a nightmare hell,” he commented.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Ronan said. “It isn’t supposed to be like that. It’s like that when it gets infected.”

“You mean by the demon.”

“Yeah, by the demon. Or if a dreamer has a particularly fucked-up mind.”

Ronan threaded his hands through the loops in his belt, then kept walking, a little faster.

Adam walked a little slower.

He didn’t know how to ask Ronan about the nightmares. About everything awful that had happened. About his anger. Ronan Lynch was such a complicated creature, a labyrinth with no string.

He knew that it was important that they be honest with each other, in a place as fickle as the dream world.

But he also just wanted to know Ronan. The same way he wanted Ronan to know him. He didn’t want them to be unknowable to each other. He wanted… he didn’t know what he wanted.

He settled for walking closer, next to Ronan, and asking, “How far is the castle?”

Ronan laughed.

“As far as the end of the universe,” he said. “As close as my own skin. I’ll know it when I see it. We’ll be there when we get there.”

“What is this, Alice in Wonderland?” Adam asked. “Talking in riddles and rhymes?”

Ronan smiled at him. He looked oddly carefree here.

“A dream within a dream,” he said. “Or whatever the fuck. That was Lewis Carroll, right?”

“Edgar Allan Poe,” Adam said.

“Same thing.”

Adam laughed.

At the sound of Adam’s laugh, bursting out of him sudden and sharp, the setting changed. Both boys startled.

There was an old castle. Like a Disney movie. Smaller than a real castle, not in the least historically accurate. Just the kind of thing a little boy would dream.

“Already?” Adam asked.

Ronan’s eyebrows were furrowed.

“This is it,” he said. “But… I really didn’t expect it to show up that fast.”

“Maybe it’s a trick,” Adam said. “Remember, Neeve and Piper could be here.”

Ronan nodded, but not convincingly.

“I don’t think that’s it,” he said. “I… This feels like the real place. I don’t get why it’s here so fast, but maybe the dream world just wants to hurry this up.”

“I don’t trust this,” Adam said.

Ronan glanced back at him, looking annoyed.

“Well, since you’re the expert on dreams,” he said.

“Oh, honestly, Ronan,” Adam said, crossing his arms. “I’m just saying we ought to be careful.”

“Yeah, well, _I’m_ saying- hang on-”

The atmosphere was shifting again, getting blurry. Ronan’s eyes were darting around. Adam could see dark metal trees again.

“For fuck’s sake,” Ronan said, then, “ _Paenitet._ I think.”

_Sorry_.

The castle was back.

Adam lifted his eyebrows.

“Sorry?” he repeated.

Ronan sighed.

“Yeah, I think- the fucking dream world responds to my emotions,” he said. “Which is just a real picnic in the goddamn sun. I think if I’m happy, it takes me where I want to go, and if I’m pissed off, it takes me back to some other place to get me lost. So.” He looked up at the sky. “I’m happy now! Don’t fuck up the landscape again!”

Adam didn’t mention how his laugh had been what had gotten them to the castle in the first place.

Instead, he said, “I guess we shouldn’t fight then.”

“Not that simple,” Ronan said. “If we just fucking stew in our anger, it’s still gonna mess with us.”

“Jesus Christ,” Adam muttered. “So…”

Oh.

That, actually, wasn’t so bad.

“So we have to talk to each other,” he said. “If we have any problems. Like… actual fucking adults.”

“Gansey would be thrilled,” Ronan said.

Adam laughed again. The castle became clearer in front of them.

“It’ll only take as long as it takes to get the stone out of this place,” Ronan said. “I think we can manage not fighting for that long.”

In the interest of not fucking up the landscape again, Adam decided not to mention the possibility that this castle was a trick, and it could take a lot longer to get out of there.

“Come on, Parrish,” Ronan said. “Follow me.”

“Anything to keep you happy, I guess,” Adam said, grinning.

“You asshole.”

He followed Ronan into the castle. It was a strange sort of beautiful, something directly from a child’s imagination, a child who was a very Ronan Lynch sort of child. The actual Ronan Lynch, the one who dreamed up tree-scented hand lotion and took care of his little brother. The one that Adam…

Was not going to think about like that right now, as he followed him down a stone corridor.

“It’s just down here,” Ronan said. “God, I can’t believe this is going to be this easy.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Adam said.

“Here,” Ronan said, as they entered a tiny room.

In the center of the room there was a podium, and nothing else, except stained glass covering the walls and a sunroof overhead. It was a beautiful room. Unfortunately, the podium was empty.

“Fuck!” Ronan exclaimed.

He threw his hands in the air, ran to the podium, ran his hands over it, and Adam said, “Be fucking careful, Lynch!”

“There’s no need to be careful!” Ronan exclaimed. “It’s not a goddamn trick, I’m telling you, Parrish, this is the fucking castle!”

“Then where’s the stone?”

“It’s _gone!_ It’s not in here anymore! Jesus fuck-ass son-of-Mary Christ! Fuck this!”

He kicked at the podium, succeeding only in injuring his foot, and shouted in pure rage.

“Ronan, calm _down!_ ” Adam yelled.

“I don’t- I don’t _want_ to be here anymore!” Ronan shouted.

He didn’t sound angry. He sounded scared. And that, more than anything, was why Adam didn’t just walk away.

“Ronan,” he repeated. “Breathe. Sit down.”

“I can’t,” Ronan said. “I don’t know what’s wrong, the castle is fucking with me, the dream world is fucking with me-”

Adam walked over, tentatively, took both of Ronan’s hands in his own, and then sat them both down on the floor, facing each other.

Ronan breathed in and out.

“I don’t _want_ to be angry,” he said, finally, in a defeated voice. “I wanted things to be the way they were.”

Adam took in a breath.

He looked at Ronan, who looked quietly, horribly afraid.

Then he said, “The way they were when?”

Ronan stared down at their intertwined hands.

“Ronan,” Adam said. “Come on. We can just talk.”

Ronan was breathing steadily, shallowly, strangely. Finally he looked up at Adam.

“Before my father died,” he said. “I dreamed of this place a lot, before my father died. And the stone was always here. Then he was killed and I never saw the castle again. Until now.”

He looked away. Adam said, “Look at me.”

He looked back. His soul was laid bare.

“Things are not going to go back to the way they were,” Adam said. “You can’t move on until you accept that.”

Ronan sighed.

“Harder than it sounds, believe it or not, Parrish,” he said.

“It’s possible,” Adam said, “that I might actually know what it’s like to try and move on from unbearable pain.”

Ronan’s face fell.

“Sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I… you’re right.”

He cleared his throat.

“We need to stay here for the night,” he said.

“The night?” Adam said, surprised at the sudden change of topic. “Does time even exist here?”

“No, but time is still going out… there,” Ronan said. “And unless we really wanna fuck around with time travel, which isn’t the goal, we’re going to come back out in however much time from now as we spend in here. And we still need sleep and shit.”

He was right- Adam was exhausted from the hike out in Cabeswater and the walk in the dream world both.

“Fine,” Adam said. “Tomorrow morning we have to strategize and figure out where this stone is after all. And we should be careful. Piper or Neeve might show up any second with the demon.”

“We’ll be safe,” Ronan said. “I’m the Greywaren.”

“That is exactly the kind of arrogant attitude that’ll get us killed, Ronan.”

“OK, _Gansey_.”

Adam rolled his eyes and got up. His hands slipped out of Ronan’s as he did, and he felt the sudden absence sharply against his skin. The feeling of their hands in each other’s had been…

He did have to think about this. At some point, he had to think about this. He was always thinking about this.

Ronan was cast in a thousand colors from the stained glass windows. He pushed himself up off the floor.

“Hey, Parrish,” he said.

“Yeah?” Adam said.

Ronan ran a hand over his shaved head.

“Thanks,” he said. “For… calming me down. I know it’s not easy, to see me go off like that.”

Adam was warm.

“It’s no problem,” he said, and he meant it.

 

Ronan figured out pretty quick what the problem was with the castle.

The necromancer stone- or no, it wasn’t really called that, but that’s what Greenmantle’s book called it- was the stone of creation. Could have been the philosopher’s stone, if someone used it to make gold or a life elixir. But you couldn’t really use it to do that, not unless you were the Greywaren.

Over the centuries, dream thieves had always tried to get at it. They always failed, because creation stones did not work with thieves. They worked with Greywarens. They were heart and soul, working together: the stone at the heart of the dream world, the heart of creation.

If Ronan pulled it out, the dream world would still exist, but its heart would be displaced. But he could do it. He was the Greywaren.

The stone followed him anyway.

And right now, it wasn’t in a castle he’d dreamt of when he was four years old and had just seen _Sleeping Beauty_. It was somewhere else. He didn’t know where, but he supposed he’d find out.

First, though, he and Adam had to rest. In the real world, they’d survive without sleep, but of course, in the dream world, they needed it to replenish them.

“One question,” Adam was saying, while they walked through the castle in search of somewhere to sleep. None of the rooms seemed to have beds or couches or anything, just more odd misplaced bits of stone and glass and flowers. “If we sleep in the dream world, do we dream?”

“Fuck if I know, Parrish.”

“That would really be a dream within a dream then.”

“Clever.”

It was a pleasant shade of night by now. Ronan’s internal clock still knew it was night, and the dream world obeyed him.

“OK, that’s it,” he said. “We’ve been in every fucking room. I guess we’re sleeping on the stone floor.”

“Can’t you just conjure up some mattresses?” Adam asked. “Or sleeping bags or whatever?”

“It doesn’t work that way, genius,” Ronan said. “I can’t just conjure up whatever, like a genie or some shit. It takes a lot of work, and I’m not going to do that just so you can sleep on something soft.”

“Wait,” Adam said. “That door down there, did we check in there?”

Ronan looked. He wasn’t entirely sure if the door had been there before, but that was dream logic for you.

He walked down the hall and opened the door. Adam followed him.

The room was small. In it there was, naturally, one bed.

“You have gotta be fucking kidding me,” Ronan said. “An entire castle of nothing, and this room has one bed in it.”

Adam looked a little amused and a little horrified.

“You’re the one who created this castle, though,” he said.

“I didn’t do the fucking interior design,” Ronan said. “Jesus goddamn Christ. Fine. It’s only one night. We’ll just share the bed. I guess.”

If his four-year-old self really was responsible for this furniture arrangement, he was never going to forgive himself for creating the most awkward situation of his life. This definitely qualified for the most awkward situation of his life, he thought.

“Fine,” Adam said, sounding exasperated. He slung his messenger bag off his back by the edge of the bed and collapsed into it. “I’m exhausted. Let’s get as much sleep as we can and then tomorrow we’ll figure out where the stone actually is.”

“Good idea,” Ronan said.

This wasn’t awkward. He had definitely never daydreamed about this scenario. He was not going to think about those daydreams; he was going to go directly to sleep.

He took off his shoes and got into the bed next to Adam.

Neither of them was sleeping.

It was dark enough now. They could go to sleep if they wanted. Ronan sure was tired enough. In the dream world, his insomnia didn’t really have the same effect.

“Ronan,” Adam said. He was inches away. They were both staring at the stone ceiling.

“Yeah?” Ronan said.

“Are your nightmares getting better?”

He sounded so tentative, voice so fragile. Ronan could not bear to close himself off, like he normally did.

“Define better,” he said. “They’re different. There’s still fucked-up shit in them, but it’s not trying to kill me anymore.”

Adam rolled over to face him. Ronan hesitated, then rolled over to face Adam as well.

In the dark, Adam’s eyes shone.

They were far too close.

“Why did they try to kill you?” Adam asked.

Ronan had not talked about this with anybody. Even with Gansey, he had never told the whole story. Even with Noah, or Matthew.

He didn’t know if he was capable of trusting.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Adam said, and his voice was like a nightingale, calm and lyrical.

“No, I don’t mind,” Ronan said. “The night horrors wanted what I wanted. That’s what I wanted, back then. It didn’t make it any less shitty, but that’s what I wanted.”

Adam didn’t say anything, just looked at him, and it wasn’t pity. Just listening.

“Not anymore, though?” he asked.

“No,” Ronan said. “Not anymore.”

In the dark, he was safe.

Adam’s hands reached between them. Ronan could not tell what was happening. He could feel his heart swelling.

“Good,” Adam said quietly.

He closed his eyes.

“Parrish,” Ronan said, because he could not leave this unsaid.

“Yeah?” Adam said, his eyes still closed.

“Nothing here is gonna hurt you. You can ask me whatever, I’m not gonna get angry, and nothing here is gonna hurt you. Just so you know.”

Adam’s hands curled against the bed.

“OK,” he said.

They lay there, breathing each other in, a long time, before they fell asleep.

 

 

The first thing Adam noticed in the morning (or “morning,” whatever the hell it was in the dream world) was that he and Ronan were covered in petals. Which was embarrassing, to say the least. Especially since there was no indication of what had produced them.

The second thing he noticed was Gwenllian sitting at the foot of the bed.

“Aaah!” he exclaimed, scrambling to sit up, which woke Ronan up as well.

“What- holy shit!”

“Good morning, good morning!” Gwenllian sang. “Look who’s awakened from their sleep within a dream!”

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here?” Ronan demanded.

“Waiting, dreamer,” Gwenllian said. “The other women said not to go after you, but I am a witch and I disobey.”

“You followed us here?”

“In a sense,” Gwenllian said.

“You’re scrying?” Adam asked.

“Right you are, mongrel,” Gwenllian said. “Only to warn you.”

Then Ronan was fully sitting up.

“Warn us about what?” he said. “Is something happening out there? Did Piper do something?”

“Nothing happens out here,” Gwenllian said. “Except a calm before the storm, of course.”

“Then what the fuck are you warning us about?”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Greywaren, you must know you are not the first to seek out the resurrection stone. My father thought he could wield it as well.”

“Glendower?” Adam said.

The gears were turning in his head, adding another bit of information to the seemingly endless library he kept up there for Gansey’s quest.

“Yes, Glyndwyr thought he could wield it as well,” she said. “Brought armies to the dream world. Into its loving forest. Planted a demon there, made out of greed.”

“Glendower invaded the dream world?” Adam said.

“It was not an invasion. It was a search party. My father did not come, but it was his fault. So I am warning you, do not make the same mistake. Do not spew out your greed.”

“We’re not looking for it out of greed,” Ronan snapped. “We’re trying to save Gansey and Cabeswater. And I’m the Greywaren. The stone belongs to me.”

“Greed,” Gwenllian said. “The stone belongs to no one. It works with you. It is your partner. It keeps you alive even when your own dreams turn on you. It is not an object, dreamer.”

Adam stared at her. Gwenllian spoke in riddles, which was frustrating for most people, but interesting to Adam.

The stone wasn’t an object. It wasn’t that crystal Ronan had seen in the castle. It was a person.

“Shit,” Ronan said. “I know where it is.”

Gwenllian flickered away.

“The stone’s a person,” Adam said, then again, “The stone’s a _person_?”

“I wouldn’t call her a person,” Ronan said. “Not exactly. Shit. She’s going to be a nightmare to drag out of the dream world.”

“She?” Adam said, realizing suddenly that he’d had half a theory that _he_ was the stone. Vain, vain, vain.

Ronan scowled and shook petals off his shoulders.

“Orphan Girl,” he said.

 

Ronan still wasn’t sure what had led the entire bed to being covered in petals, but he knew it was either his or Adam’s unconscious magic that had done it. Which was embarrassing and exhilarating and not what they needed to focus on now, at any rate.

“She’s always been with you?” Adam asked.

They were out of the castle now. Back in the woods. Ronan knew what he needed to look for- a cave, the cave Orphan Girl liked to hide in.

“More or less,” Ronan said. “During the worst nightmares, at least.”

“You said she was a child,” Adam said. “But the way Gwenllian was talking, she must be… ancient.”

“I think the child thing is just a form,” Ronan said. “The stone lives different lives, over and over again. And I told you, time works weird here. I think she _is_ a child, in a way, and also ancient, in another way. She’s more complicated than she looks.”

He knew Orphan Girl as well as he knew Matthew. Like a sister. Or a daughter. Or a mother. Or all three.

“Why did you call her Orphan Girl?” Adam asked.

“I didn’t used to call her that,” Ronan said. “Not until I started to think of myself as an orphan.”

Adam looked at him gently. Ronan thought of the way they’d talked last night.

He felt so impossibly safe.

“I called her Orphan Girl because I wanted to feel like she was an orphan, too,” he said. “But I didn’t always call her that.”

Adam tilted his head in interest. “What did you call her before?”

Ronan stared at the ground. It had been a long, long time. A long time since he’d played in the dream world like it was just an extension of the Barns, before it had become rotted with nightmares.

“She had a different name,” he said. “Opal. Like the gemstone.”

It was obvious, in retrospect.

“Opal,” Adam said, testing it out.

“I never thought about pulling her out of the dreams,” Ronan said. “She asked me to, sometimes. I think she was afraid, but she was always brave. Both of us had to be brave, to survive it.”

Adam drew closer. Ronan stopped walking.

They were in a clearing now. Above them, a tree was blooming with the same kind of petals that had coated them that morning.

“Can you pull her out now, though?” Adam asked.

Ronan nodded.

“I can pull her out,” he said. “I can get all of us out the same way we came. But taking another sentient being out- especially one that was born here- that’s going to rock the dream world. The demon’s going to find out. Piper and Neeve are going to find out.”

Adam let out an irritated sigh.

“I guess we always knew that was a risk,” he said.

“No, you don’t get it, Adam,” Ronan said.

He was so scared.

Despite himself, he sat down on the ground, and Adam sat across from him. That was dream logic- do what you wanted to do, not what made sense.

“What is it?” Adam asked.

Orphan Girl. Brave and terrified. Crying out for help and grounding Ronan at the same time. He could not risk them getting at her. If they took her, they would destroy her, and if they destroyed her, there was no more Greywaren.

There would never be another Greywaren.

But that wasn’t what bothered him.

“I just want to protect her,” he said. “God damn it. I want to protect all of them. I don’t want them to get hurt.”

Adam leaned forward.

“This is dangerous,” he said. “You knew that going in. But we can protect her. You said it yourself. You have powers they can’t even imagine.”

Ronan looked up. Both of them were smiling.

“So do you,” he said.

“Exactly,” Adam said. “The magician and the Greywaren. We can protect… Opal.”

Ronan nodded, and something in him settled.

“Come on, Parrish,” he said. “Let’s find her.”

 

She was not in the cave where Ronan had said she’d be.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Ronan said. “She’s not here, either?”

“Opal?” Adam called out.

“She doesn’t know you,” Ronan said, looking back toward him. “You calling out for her isn’t gonna work. Besides, I told you, I haven’t called her that in ages.”

“OK,” Adam said. “You call her, then.”

He stood at the mouth of the cave, watching Ronan go in a bit further, and thinking about Orphan Girl. The idea of her was intriguing in a way that things weren’t usually intriguing to Adam. Intriguing the way a tree was intriguing. Delicate. Something he thought he could care for, even if it was strong on its own.

He wondered what she looked like.

“No, she’s not here,” Ronan said, emerging from the cave. “Damn it. I have no fucking clue where she’s gonna be.”

He looked immensely frustrated, wringing his hands. Adam glanced around. The dream world was rather calm right now- birds chirping, trees swaying in the wind.

“Let’s strategize,” Adam said. “Come on, let’s sit down, and we should eat something.”

“Eat what?” Ronan said. “There isn’t any food here.”

Adam held up his messenger bag. “I brought food.”

He sat down on the rocky outcropping outside the cave, while Ronan muttered something under his breath about not planning ahead, and then joined him. Adam pulled a couple of granola bars out of his bag, along with a slightly squished apple.

They ate quietly, looking out on the relatively peaceful dream landscape. Adam handed Ronan the apple when he was halfway through it.

This was easy.

“If the dream world doesn’t have geography,” Adam said, after a while, “then she isn’t in any particular place, most likely. She’s more in a state of mind. And if she’s attached to you, then it’s whatever state of mind you’re in. Right?”

“What do I look like, a professor in dream-ology?” Ronan said.

“You’d be a terrible professor.”

“Fuck you, Parrish. I’d be great at teaching.”

Adam laughed and leaned over himself, comfortable.

“Really, though,” he said. “It seems like the rules of this place are that things are in the places that represent them. What does she represent to you?”

Ronan leaned back, thinking.

“Someone who understands me,” he said. “A twin, almost. A soulmate, but obviously not like that. Kindred spirit.”

Adam considered this.

“Then maybe we should try going to a place that represents… I don’t know, your soul,” he said, and cringed a little at the cheesiness of the phrase.

“My _soul_?” Ronan said.

“You know what I mean, Lynch. Whatever it is about you that relates to Orphan Girl. Your being or whatever.”

Ronan sighed.

“Worth a try,” he said. “I- I think I know a place.”

He looked a little worried, and Adam thought of the day they’d been in the church- how much Ronan had not wanted him to be there.

“I don’t have to come with you,” Adam said. “If you don’t want me to see it.”

“No,” Ronan said decisively. “You can come. I…”

He looked at Adam and turned a little red. Adam caught his breath.

“It’s fine if you’re there,” Ronan finished, although it sounded like he was saying _I trust you._

Adam nodded. They were still looking at each other. The dream sky was a little bluer.

“Where is it, then?” he asked.

Ronan closed his eyes and said, “Here.”

The landscape shifted.

They were standing in a field. It was reminiscent of the Barns, but not the Barns. It was very obviously not Virginia. Around them, deer-like animals were running, leaving a circular clearing where there was just Ronan, Adam, and swaying grass.

Ronan opened his eyes.

Adam asked, “What is this place?”

He realized he was half in awe.

Ronan answered, “Where I dreamed my first dream.”

He gestured at the grass. Adam looked down. Amid the grass were indigo flowers that, when the wind tossed them, gleamed with a sudden light.

If he’d been asked a year ago what Ronan Lynch’s soul looked like, Adam would never have guessed this place.

“How old were you?” he asked.

“I don’t remember,” Ronan said. “But I remember the dream.”

He looked so much like he belonged here. Not because he was dream and dream alone, but because he was real and this place felt real. A liminal space of the dream world, like if they walked a little further they’d be back amongst the waking.

Neither of them, at that moment, were thinking about Orphan Girl.

They were looking at each other.

And Adam knew that this was not the time, that this could jeopardize their search, that this didn’t make sense. But that was dream logic: do what you want to do, not what makes sense.

He stepped forward, took Ronan’s face in his hands, and kissed him.

Ronan froze.

Adam stepped back.

His heart was stuttering and rushing in his chest. It had barely lasted a second, but he was going insane with how much he wanted this.

Ronan was staring at him, looking utterly terrified and confused.

Shit. _Shit_. Had he read this wrong? Had this all been Adam Parrish’s vanity after all?

“I’m sorry,” he said, when Ronan still said nothing. “I shouldn’t have kissed you… I’m sorry…”

Ronan stepped forward.

“Don’t say sorry,” he said. Everything about him was solid. “Just tell me why you did it.”

Adam looked up at him, trying to read his face. It was very unclear. Everything in Adam felt unclear.

Except this. This one thread of white electric truth running through him like the wind rushing over the bluebells and the grass.

“Because I wanted to,” he said. “Because I like you.”

A smile spread over Ronan’s face.

“Really?” he said, and Adam couldn’t help but laugh at that: so childlike and hopeful.

“Don’t laugh!” Ronan said, indignantly, and then they were both laughing, and Adam was not sure how this much sunlight could exist just in the space between his head and his lungs.

He set his hands lightly on Ronan’s shoulders. Ronan’s eyes widened.

“Yes, really,” he said, and kissed Ronan again.

It was raining. Adam didn’t know when it had started raining. The sky had been grey but he thought maybe this was just more dream world logic.

Every sensation was alive: gentle rain on his skin, Ronan’s warm lips on his, his heartbeat thundering, his mind clearing into a bright, awake haze.

“Adam,” Ronan breathed, when they broke apart.

“Yeah?” Adam said, a little breathlessly, looking into his eyes.

Ronan was still smiling, a warm and real thing.

“I like you too,” he said quietly.

“I know,” Adam said.

“Asshole.”

“You’re an asshole.”

They just looked at each other. Adam wanted to kiss him again, but they both knew that there were other things to do.

“This isn’t a dream,” Ronan said. “We’re in the dream world but this isn’t a dream.”

“Not a dream within a dream,” Adam said. “A reality within a dream.”

“Yeah,” Ronan said.

Inexplicably, he was still smiling.

Then there was a beating sound on the ground behind them. Something like… hooves.

They both turned around.

A little girl with wispy blond hair emerged from the rush of deer around the clearing. She was wearing a skullcap and a large sweater, and her legs ended in goat-like hooves.

“Orphan Girl,” Ronan said.

She eyed Adam curiously. Clearly, she did not recognize him.

Adam had never seen her before, but he felt a strange spark of recognition. There was a hungry look about her, a scared look. He thought instantly of a small Adam, curled in the corner while his father screamed.

She was a lonely thing.

Adam could not bear to see her loneliness. He stepped forward cautiously and knelt down beside her, every movement soft. Ronan stayed standing behind him, not saying a word.

“Here,” Adam said, gently, and took the watch off his wrist.

She looked up at him carefully and took the watch from him. Then she placed it in her mouth.

Adam smiled, and Orphan Girl- or Opal, if that was her real name- gave him a tentative smile back.

And then roots started bursting from the earth.

“What the fuck, Parrish?” Ronan said, and ran forward. He fell to his knees as well and held Orphan Girl tightly.

“ _Kerah?”_ she squawked.

This wasn’t a part of the dream world. Adam knew this. He could feel the connection running through him.

“Cabeswater,” he said. “Cabeswater’s trying to take us back.”

“She has to come with us,” Ronan said. Around him, vines were growing rapidly, leaves curling around his legs.

Orphan Girl said something in a language Adam didn’t understand.

“Don’t worry,” Ronan said to her. “You’re coming with us.”

He held tight to her, then looked up.

“Parrish,” he said. “Hold on.”

The earth shook.

Adam held on to Ronan and Orphan Girl.

Their eyes squeezed shut.

_Cabeswater_ , he thought. _Take all of us._

And then they fell.

 

They were back in Cabeswater. On the hill. It was Saturday.

Ronan’s back ached from the fall to earth. When they’d re-emerged in the waking world, they’d been several feet in the sky.

“Kerah!” Orphan Girl shrieked. “Kerah, Kerah!”

He stared.

Next to him, Adam was crumpled on the ground. He looked alive and conscious. Orphan Girl was sitting in a heap, seemingly undamaged by the fall.

It was surreal as all hell to see her in the waking world.

Adam sat up.

The sky was white but the sun was pushing through it, lighting Adam up softly. Ronan could not remember the last time he’d felt like this. He wondered if he’d ever felt like this.

Adam looked serious.

“Piper saw that,” he said. “There’s no way Piper didn’t see that. She doesn’t know where we are now, but the demon could try and find out for her. We should get out of Cabeswater as fast as we can.”

Ronan nodded.

“Come on, urchin,” he said to Orphan Girl. She was scared of most things, though she braved them all, but she was not scared of Ronan’s harsh voice. It was part of what comforted him about her.

Orphan Girl pushed herself off the ground and said something in the confusing dream-language.

“I don’t understand that here,” Ronan said. “English or Latin.”

She sighed, a little dramatically, and stumbled her way over to the edge of the hilltop. Ronan got up and took her hand.

“Come on, Parrish, let’s get back to the car,” he said.

Adam got up and followed them.

They were in a bit of a rush, now, full of the knowledge that something could attack them at any second. Cabeswater was rustling, worried, around them.

“Once we’re back somewhere with cell reception,” Adam said, as they hurriedly got into the BMW, settling Orphan Girl into the backseat, “give me your phone. I’m gonna call Gansey and see how he and Blue are doing.”

“Good idea,” Ronan said. He started up the car and sped back down the rocky path to the bottom of the hill, then out through the bit of forest, until they were back on the road.

All three of them caught their breath.

“Holy Christ,” Adam said. Then his face lit up. “We did it, holy shit, we did it.”

He glanced towards the backseat.

“Is she OK?” he asked.

Ronan realized that Adam, unlike him, did not have an instinctive knowledge of Orphan Girl’s feelings at any moment.

“Yeah, she’s fine,” Ronan said. “Trust me, she’ll let you know if she’s not.”

Orphan Girl was, at the moment, studying the seatbelt with a combination of her hands and teeth. Ronan was still caught somewhere between disbelief and obvious belief that she was the dream stone, the necromancer stone, whatever it was called.

Adam seemed to be thinking about that, too.

“So, she’ll be the one to bring Gansey back to life,” he said.

“That’s the idea,” Ronan said.

Adam shook his head and leaned back against the seat.

“Is this how it normally feels when you wake up?” he asked. “That weird disconnect.”

“We’ve been in the dream world for almost a whole day,” Ronan said. “Of course it feels weird, it’s a different fucking world.”

“I feel…” Adam looked out the window at the rushing road. “Awake.”

“Observant,” Ronan said. “That’s because you are awake, genius.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do.”

There was a strange thrill to all of this. His life was turning and turning- he’d been to the dream world, Orphan Girl was in the waking world, Gansey was going to die, and…

No. _That_ was not part of all this turning mess. Adam was stability and clarity.

He stared forward at the road. They didn’t talk for a while.

“Parrish,” Ronan said, finally.

“Yeah?” Adam said.

“That… that wasn’t just the dream world fucking with your head? You know, when you…”

He caught Adam’s shy smile at the corner of his eye, and he knew with a drop in his heart that it had been real.

“No,” Adam said. “That was me. I meant what I said.”

Ronan was smiling now, too.

“OK,” he said, because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to say anything else.

Adam was blushing. It was beautiful and adorable on his sunlit skin.

“I, um,” Ronan said. “I wasn’t lying… I meant it, too…”

He was turning red, too. He wasn’t sure how normal people were supposed to speak.

“OK,” Adam said. His head turned on the headrest to look over at Ronan, and Ronan kept looking at the road, unable to stop smiling.

Dreams and reality kept washing in and over each other, like an ocean at the coast.

 

Blue and Gansey were at Fox Way. Noah was curled up on the floor, looking weak.

When they brought Orphan Girl inside, Maura and Calla both eyed her with a look of wonder. Then Calla looked at Ronan and said, “You never cease to surprise me, snake.”

They looked at each other and walked out of the room.

Gansey and Blue were both staring. Blue said, “Who… what… where did you find her?”

“In my dreams,” Ronan said.

“Is that what you were looking for?” Gansey asked.

Ronan nodded.

“Why did you need Adam for that?” Blue asked.

“I needed to get Cabeswater to help,” Adam said.

Ronan and Adam looked at each other and an unspoken agreement passed between them to tell the others exactly where they’d been.

Gansey was, naturally, horrified that they had decided to do something so _dangerous_ without informing him. Blue was mostly impressed and asked a lot of questions.

Noah had a somewhat knowing look on his face. Ronan knew that look; the little shit was always doing that, knowing stuff he wasn’t supposed to know. He and Cabeswater and the ley line and time were all tied up in each other.

When the three of them realized that Orphan Girl was going to bring Gansey back to life, Blue stared at the ground.

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh, what?” Ronan said.

“Something Gwenllian said,” she said. She looked a little sad and a little resigned. “Makes more sense now. She said the plan won’t work unless I’m the one to kill him.”

Gansey’s eyes shut tight.

“Because of the curse,” Adam said.

“What curse?” Ronan asked. He was sick of being left out of all these important secrets.

“My curse,” Blue said. “If I kiss my true love, I’ll kill him.”

Gansey looked regal as ever.

“So that settles it,” he said. “You kiss me on the ley line. Ronan’s orphan girl brings me back to life.”

“That is a backup plan,” Blue said. “That’s if the favor from Glendower doesn’t work.”

They all knew it wasn’t a backup plan.

Noah said, out of nowhere, “We still have a little time. Please don’t already resign yourself to the end. We still have a little time.”

Then he popped out of the air, like he sometimes did, when he just wanted to leave.

The four teenagers all looked at each other.

“Noah’s right,” Adam said. “We’re not doing this today. We should rest, first. We should just…”

He looked down at his own hands.

“Just enjoy our lives. For a bit. Before the storm starts.”

 

They drove back to Monmouth.

Gansey stayed at Fox Way, spending the afternoon with Blue. Ronan moved to drive Adam back to St. Agnes, but Adam asked to go to Monmouth instead.

Chainsaw and Opal were in the backseat. Adam knew he should have called her Orphan Girl, but he thought she deserved to have her name.

In Monmouth, she started exploring the living room. Occasionally she would pick something up and chew on it.

“Should we… watch her?” Adam asked. “Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself or mess things up?”

“Gansey could stand to have a little more mess around here,” Ronan said, which was blatantly untrue, since the entire place was a mess. “And she’s not gonna hurt herself. She knows what she’s doing.”

As if to prove his point, Opal neatly avoided tripping over the Henrietta model, and instead navigated it carefully on her hooves.

Ronan looked at Adam. Adam looked back.

Everything was old and new at the same time.

“Hey,” Adam said softly. “Ronan. Thanks… thanks for trusting me. With all that. In the dream world.”

Ronan smiled, easy, simple.

“I trust you,” he said.

There was that burning that felt like water again. Like rain.

“You can trust me, too, you know,” Ronan added. “With anything.”

Like a curtain between them had dissipated.

“It’s difficult,” Adam said. “You know, for me. To trust people.”

“I know,” Ronan said.

“I’ll try, though,” Adam said.

“OK,” Ronan said.

They were standing incredibly close.

Adam reached up and kissed him again. Ronan nearly melted against him. His eyes were closed, but all he could see was light.

Opal was staring at them when they broke apart.

“Kerah?” she said. “Adam?”

“Ah, shit,” Ronan said. “Sorry, kid. Didn’t mean to make you a third wheel.”

Adam laughed at that, and then laughed more, a joy-born kind of laugh, when Ronan smiled.

“What’s a third wheel?” Opal asked, her voice a little more girl than bird this time.

Ronan glanced up at the ceiling in exasperation.

“You got yourself into this, Lynch,” Adam said.

Then he walked over and sat next to Opal, where she was gnawing on an abandoned book.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said.

Opal looked up, still curious, and said, “You know what I am. An opal.”

Ronan sat down next to Adam, very close, and put his arm around Adam’s waist. Adam leaned into him.

“An opal,” Ronan said. “The heart of a dream.”

Opal nodded.

“The heart of a dream,” Adam repeated. Ronan was warm against him, and they were both smiling.

He had never felt so awake.

**Author's Note:**

> I really want these two to work out their communication issues, so I hope it wasn't too unrealistic how they managed to do that here. Also... evidently even in a non-TRK-compliant AU I can't resist dragging Opal in. I just... I just love her so much.  
> Anyway, this is very different from what I usually do with this fandom, but I hope you liked it. Please let me know what you think! I'm on tumblr at arielmagicesi also if you want to hit me up there.


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